The man that saved a billion lives: Norman Borlaug and GMOs

Now deceased, Norman Borlaug’s legacy lives on in the technology he tirelessly distributed across the globe. This is the legacy of agricultural technology, specifically of genetically modified organisms. Yet, it is amongst the most maligned scientific achievements of the past decades; the ‘Frankenfoods’ have been spurned in favor of a return to the ‘natural’ processes of the ‘organic’ food movement.

Dec 30, 2010

Now deceased, Norman Borlaug’s legacy lives on in the technology he tirelessly distributed across the globe. This is the legacy of agricultural technology, specifically of genetically modified organisms. Yet, it is amongst the most maligned scientific achievements of the past decades; the ‘Frankenfoods’ have been spurned in favor of a return to the ‘natural’ processes of the ‘organic’ food movement.

Borlaug’s opinion was summed up during a television appearance prior to his death, where he responded to the position that all food should be processed according to the practices of the ‘organic’ movement: “We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don’t see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.”

Read Jonathan Gray's article on Borlaug, GMOs and organic production at the Toronto Globalist[2].